


Burt's Bar

by agoodwoman



Series: Belfast [2]
Category: The Fall (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ladies meet for drinks</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burt's Bar

  
Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson listened to the report in the over her mobile, a voice crackling through her phone. She slipped her hand into her pocket and dug her thumb into her middle finger, hoping to dispell some nervous energy through fidgeting. The quiet hallway at the back of Burt's Bar kept invasive ears at bay.  It offered low lighting, a piano player and close proximity to her hotel room as an added convenience.

  
Even though Professor Tanya Reed Smith worked alongside Stella with the investigation, Stella couldn't very well take the call in front of her. She would have too many questions that would reveal Stella's act of withholding from the day before. It wasn't technically lying but she wasn't sharing the whole truth. What Reed Smith shared with Tom Stagg or anyone else wasn't known to the detective superintendant and it wasn't procedural to tell a pathologist an investigation strategy or what their next move was. The medical examiner's office was a tool for Stella to utilize and by extension, Reed Smith was an implement of getting more information, anything that could help her discover more about the bodies or her friend, Rose Stagg. 

  
She bit down on her thumb, worrying the pad of it with her teeth and continued to listen, hoping tonight's surveillance would be adventageous in their hope to capture Paul Spector. 

  
The anticipation of waiting for a report on the intruder on the Spector home was telling, the Bennadetto girl being involved, but was nevertheless, anticlimactic.  

  
Reed Smith had apologized for prying about James Olson with her words and her tone and Stella had brushed off the intrusion into her private life. She wanted to share that information with Reed but probably not for the same reasons she wanted to know them. Before Stella was called away, they had wallowed in their mutual guilt for getting Rose involved in the investigation. 

  
How were they to know that Spector would be so bold to kidnap Rose? Everything that had happened since she arrived was unpredictable of how a normal serial killer behaved. She would never guess Spector would continue to torment Stella with phone calls and clues, revealing himself more and more as a true sexual psychopath on a self-destructive downward spiral.

  
It was now the desire of Operation Music Man to find Rose Stagg and arrest Paul Spector but the latter could not happen until the mother of two was safe in custody. It pressed on her mind throughout the day. The guilt she felt over Rose palpitated in her breast and tightened her throat. 

  
Jim Burns was determined to separate her from the kidnapping but they both knew that it was her fault. The stress from this case was building. The death of Olson, the death of Sarah Kay, Annie Brawley's attack and the death of her brother Joe and talking with Paul Spector on the phone twice was becoming too much.

  
Swimming could only help to some degree but the physical needs that could only be met by another person was creating an avalanche of desire inside of her. She couldn't deny her body much longer and she felt like Reed might be open to her. There were signs along the way Stella had picked up on. Aside from meeting for drinks, the occasional coffee and stopping by the station a few times, Stella could tell the pathologist felt drawn to her. 

  
Reed didn't wear a ring but she was certain she had a male partner, possibly the father of her daughters. When they spoke on the phone earlier she could hear a man speaking in the background and she assumed that was her spouse. In her office was a picture of Reed with her children but no photos of anyone else; no family or close friends she displayed proudly as though to say 'these are my people also, these people want and care for me.'

  
Perhaps that was what drew Stella to Reed. She too, seemed like an island.  Maybe she was lying to herself so she would feel less guilty about utilising Reed in another way.

  
When she was hanging up the phone, Stella watched the uptight lawyer take the margaritas from the bar. He winked at the group of gentlemen he was with before approaching Reed, who had been waiting patiently back at their table. 

  
Stella glanced over at the other men, the chauvanistic sludge dripping off their pressed shirts and slick hair. 

  
In Ireland, the population of 'ethnic' or non-caucasian women was small and of that group, women that looked like Reed were even more uncommon. Asian women were looked at like an accessory to men like Michael Day. It wasn't surprising that she would need to fight off interested men at a bar but it didn't make the grand overatures of the primal mating dance between men and women any less distasteful. This one is new and shiny, pick her up at a bar, fuck her for a while and decide whether or not to keep her and claim her forever or toss her aside until the next new and shiny woman came along. 

  
The Bacon and Day solicitor liked the way she looked in her slick pants, heels and flowy blouse with expanses of chocolate skin peeking out. 

  
"Sorry I'm late," Stella slid into the booth and kissed Reed firmly on the lips. 

  
Delightfully, Reed kissed her back. A responsive body is easily identified. Lips are soft, mouths open slightly and the body is not tense, it plays into the kiss.

 

"It's nice to see you," Stella said, acting as though she had just arrived.

 

"Oh, it's nice to see you too," Reed played along. Reed turned her head, tilted it slightly and allowed Stella to slowly kiss her again. She pressed her lips longer and felt like with more intent. This was not a kiss to greet but a kiss to arouse. The kiss was not ward off the slimy lawyer but as a surprise consequence of the initial kiss. 

  
Reed's mouth tasted like the mint and rum from her mojito and the sweet lipstick she had applied before walking into the bar. She could smell her skin, the soft fragrant scent of a woman versus the tang and spice of a man. A man's lips feel different than a woman's in subtle ways. Most women have softer lips, their mouths are smaller and their tongues feel slick. It was Stella's experience that being with a woman was entirely different from fucking a man. Each individual affair was new unto itself and she couldn't compare sex with a woman to sex with a man. It was two different acts resulting in the same result, ecstasy and rapture. 

 

Eventually, they tore their lips and eyes away from one another. 

  
Stella maneuvered her arm around Reed and took the margaritas from the unwelcomed loiterer. "Thanks, keep them coming."

  
"I'm not the waiter," he replied.

  
"Then why are you standing there?" She countered, knowing that his honest response would be too embarrassing to utter outloud after the exchange he just witnessed. Reed tilted her head toward Stella, also in question of the intruder on their evening.

  
Stella and Reed took sips from their margaritas as Michael Day buggered off. 

  
"That was nice," Stella observed, sliding her body closer to Reed's.

  
"Yes it was," Reed agreed eyeing the blonde before looking toward her drink. She wiggled in her seat and brushed her leg closer towards Stella. "He knows who I am. I dare say he knows who you are."

 

"So what?" Stella brushed off the statement. After the Chronicle article, anything else printed about Stella's private life could only be more 'for the archives' as Jim Burns had put it. She sipped her margarita and allowed the tequilla to burn in her chest. Reed looked at her and watched as she licked the salt off her lips that transferred from the rim of her glass before setting it down on the table.

  
"I have someone," Reed stated after a few beats as she drank more of the green liquid.

  
"Okay," Stella replied, keeping her proximity and looking down where Reed was brushing her fingers along Stella's leg.

  
She felt the immediate swelling in her sex and a tingling to her centre.  Reed was playing coy but not disinterested. The light touches to her leg, the way she kept her ground and leaned into her... Stella wasn't sure if she should pull away or push forward.

  
It was not rare for her to feel like the instigator in a sexual encounter, for her to initiate any engagement once she decided she wanted someone. She had rarely put herself out there and felt the sting of rejection and so when she felt as though there wasn't an interest, she remained collected within herself, her passion subdued. 

  
Stella Gibson was able to draw people, not just men - enjoying intimacy with men and women and preferred it that way. Sexuality was fluid, something to be enjoyed among consenting adults and she didn't consider herself to be labelled as one thing or another. And sometimes, a man would not be sufficient when the stamina and feeling a woman had was entirely and completely required.

  
"You have someone?" Stella repeated Reed's earlier statement and traced her finger over the soft leather of the booth behind the black locks on the pathologist's head.

  
Reed looked up into Stella's pale blue eyes. "A man."

  
"Husband?" Stella asked, her eyes dragging from Reed's onyx eyes down to her mouth then back up her face.

  
"No," she said. "But a partner."

  
"You've had kids together," Stella stated it but she was hoping the reply would be no.

  
Reed shook her head in the negative and looked down at where her fingers were toying with the soft material on Stella's pants. "My girls are from my first marriage. My  husband died after my youngest was born."

  
"I see," Stella replied, watching Reed's face closely.

  
"My partner and I met here in Belfast after we moved," Reed explained further and laced her fingers with Stella's normally cool digits. 

  
Stella didn't think it was possible but Reed moved closer to her, brushing her arm into Stella's breast. Nipples tightening and her sex throbbed. 

  
A flush took over Reed's face and glanced around the bar. No one in the bar was watching them anymore since the lawyer had left their table.   
Reed Smith had not showed up for this, or maybe she had. When someone showed Reed the newspaper article about Stella and James Olson she couldn't get on the phone fast enough to find out where Stella was. She wanted to know what happened and who had leaked the information about the marks to the press. If Stella could discount the affair, she might feel better.   

  
But Stella had confirmed they had spent a night together and Stella had dismissed it as quickly as she had admitted to it. Reed was not the type of woman to see a person and invite them up to her hotel room or back to her place. She was a serial monogamist, even though her partner often accused her of owning the most 'singular person' vehicle possible. But with the hours Reed kept and the fact that Dan worked from home, he had the family car. Petrol and insurance was cheaper on a bike. That's what she insisted, anyway.

  
"I like you," Reed said, shyly and laughed nervously. "I mean..."

  
"I like you too," Stella replied calmly. Her voice was warm but still however her pulse was racing. This was a much longer dance than she was used to and the anticipation was arresting.

  
Reed leaned her face close to Stella's. "If I... If we were to..."

  
Stella brushed her lips against Reeds and the brunette leaned into her, opening her mouth to accept Stella's soft tongue against hers. Stella's hand, that had been idle on Reed's lap began to stroke the slick fabric.

  
A quiet sigh escaped Reed's mouth and Stella pulled away suddenly.

  
"Do you want to come up to my room?" Stella asked and took a drink of her margarita. "It's a bit more private."

  
Reed wiped Stella's lipstick off the corners of her mouth and nodded. "Sure."

  
As they settled their tab, Reed was watching Stella intently but she was determined not to give anything away. Yes, Reed was her friend so there would be a deeper intimacy there however the point of all this, because she would be leaving Belfast eventually, was to find release for the build up of sexual tension she had inside of her.

  
When she felt scared, when she felt lonely, when she felt stressors in her life, the one thing a sexual encounter could do was help her forget.   
Their fingers brushed against one another as they walked towards the elevator. Stella watched the numbers on the dial swing by, showing them their escape to the privacy of Stella's room, down the long corridor of the hotel was only moments away.

  
"What am I doing?" Reed muttered.

  
"Going with the flow," Stella replied, glancing over at her.

  
"I grew up in Croydon," Reed stated as though that was the explanation.

 

Not, 'I've got a man.' Not 'I'm not interested in women.' Certainly not, 'I'm not interested in you.'

  
"What's that got to do with anything?" Stella countered. 

  
"I can't," Reed said. "I'm sorry, I can't."

  
Stella watched her walk down the hall back toward the lobby and waited, not entirely surprised for her elevator. She realized as she stepped onto the car that perhaps a woman committed to another man, with children, was also an inappropriate as a choice as James Olson. While her body was still wound up, the logical side of her brain knew that Reed would have been a messy choice. 


End file.
